This past weekend we witnessed a rare event in national politics.

The youngest member of the U.S. Congress, a 29-year old Latina congresswoman who only a year ago was just a waitress working for a minimum wage in a lower Manhattan restaurant, now commands the power to anoint presidential candidates.

Bernie Sanders, a veteran senator already with one presidential campaign under his belt, was the lucky one who received the public show of support from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocassio-Cortez in what was considered the largest rally held so far in honor of any of the candidates during the current campaign for the Democratic nomination.

“For me, it wasn’t even about helping the senator,” Ocasio-Cortez explained.

“It was a moment of clarity for me,” she told NBC.

“I want to be a part of a mass movement (...) I’m proud to be part of this movement.”

What movement is she referring to?

Perhaps the answer is in the way Ocasio-Cortes answered a question from an African-American reporter, CBS News correspondent Nikole Killion.

“As a woman of color, why back an old white guy?” she was asked.

Ocasio-Cortez had a very simple and confident answer:

“I’m actually very excited about this partnership because it shows (...) that we have to come together across race, across gender, across generations.”

“Will the Ocasio-Cortez’s Sanders endorsement shake up the 2020 race?” asks the Guardian, one of the major news media organizations following the meteoric career of the young Puerto Rican congresswoman.

Hard to say. But what is certain is that in her nine months in Congress she has already proved many people wrong, and she has clearly exceeded everybody’s expectations.

Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the national leader of Latino descent the nation has been waiting for decades?

No doubt she is not afraid of the huge challenge.